Abu Ala al-Afri

Aba Ala al-Afri (1959-13 May 2015), born Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli, was the Deputy Leader of the Islamic State from 22 April to 13 May 2015 after Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was wounded and paralyzed in an airstrike during Operation Inherent Resolve. al-Afri himself was killed in an airstrike on 13 May 2015.

Biography
Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli was born in 1959 in Mosul, Ninawa Governorate, Kingdom of Iraq to a Sunni Muslim family. He became a follower of Mustafa Setmariam Nasar and al-Qaeda, and was also a physics teacher in Tal Afar, with dozens of publications and sharia studies of his own. In 1998 he joined al-Qaeda after training in Afghanistan and earned the trust and respect of Osama Bin Laden, and returned to Iraq in 2004 to join al-Qaeda in Iraq under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He oversaw sharia activities in northern Iraq and became the local AQI leader in Mosul. After Zarqawi, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi's deaths by 2010, Osama wanted al-Afri to be made the new leader of the Islamic State of Iraq. However, Haji Bakr wanted Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to be made leader instead, and he was confirmed as the new ISI leader.

In 2012, al-Afri escaped from an Iraqi Army prison and moved to Syria to fight in the Syrian Civil War. He joined forces with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who renamed the Islamic State of Iraq/al-Qaeda in Iraq to "the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria", which became a caliphate on 27 June 2014. al-Afri was made the Deputy Caliph of the Islamic State after al-Baghdadi was wounded in an airstrike in March 2015, replacing Abu Ali al-Anbari as second-in-command. However, his tenure did not last long. On 13 May 2015, a United States-led coalition airstrike part of Operation Inherent Resolve killed him, a blow to ISIS.